Customer Reviews

Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850

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The potato blight that struck Ireland in the mid 1800s produced a nation-wide famine, resulting in "one million dead and two million who fled" to other countries, predominately the US and Canada. Countless other Irishmen, with no food, money or homes, simply disappeared. Susan Campbell Bartoletti's "Black Potatoes" recreates the era year by year from haunting contemporary newspaper illustrations, government records and first hand survivor stories, told to their children and grandchildren.

Bartoletti provides a balanced account of the economic, political and social repercussions of the blight and the ensuing famine. Food was available but the poor did not have the means to acquire it. The British government was slow to react to the devastation. Irish government officials, landowners, and shopkeepers worked to protect their own interests but, finally, in the end, contributed the greatest amount of financial support to the poor. The Friends Church, operating local soup kitchens, and American relatives, sending millions of dollars in financial support, were allies of the Irish poor during these times.

This book is a wonderful historical recounting of the time and is compelling reading for those of all ages interested in their Irish heritage. Bartoletti brings the horrors of famine and poverty to life. The 150-year old drawings, originally published in the "Illustrated London News", will stay with the reader long after the book is finished. The six-page narrative bibliography is as interesting as the story itself, and provides students and researchers with numerous sources for further study.

Susan Campbell Bartoletti, already well known for her award-winning fiction and nonfiction, has reached new heights with this book. It is clearly impeccably researched, yet never reads like a dry compilation of facts. It is by turns moving, horrifying, hopeful, and depressing. Although she points out the general indifference and (often) hostility of some government officials who could have provided some relief, she never falls into the easy trap of making anyone the villain of the terrible story of the Irish potato famine. Instead, she details the general ignorance of the cause of the blight and the sometimes well-meaning but misguided attempts of different people to remedy the situation.

Most importantly, the reader leaves feeling that this is not some strange thing that happened to unknown people a long time ago. The feeling of immediacy, and the way the reader is led to empathize with the sufferers, make it fresh and real.

Readers of "Nory Ryan's Song" who want to get the real history of this terrible time should be encouraged to read "Black Potatoes."

An interesting and worthwhile history, made more palatable than a textbook by the extensive quotations of personal accounts and contemporary newspaper illustrations.

Broad in scope and adequate in depth, the book treats the Great Irish Famine of 1845-1850 with a sensitive, compassionate tone, spending great time on the human toll of the Famine, as well as the diseases it invited and the social upheaval it instigated.

Bartoletti vividly illustrates the dehumanizing and horrifying experience of the starving Irish, and explicitly eschews diplomacy to explore the economic and political causes. The book also explores both the (perceived or actual) maintenance and possible exacerbation of the crisis by the English government and the English landlords. Bartoletti concludes that the awkward and faltering relief was so unwillingly given because of staunchly protected laissez-faire economics as well as cultural biases and prejudice against the Irish. These factors created a political climate where merely the forecast of improvement caused the English to quit relief programs, often too soon, thus causing the situation to worsen for the Irish, creating staggering costs - in pounds as well as in lives.

Brief treatment of revolutionary activity is included, as well as interesting exposition of folk beliefs and practices.

This book avoids the "boring history" noose of more densely-written academic works, and is clearly targeted at young adults with its narrative style, but I recommend this for anyone wishing to read more deeply on this subject. Definitely written from an Irish point of view, but well researched and rich in original sources.

This is the best non-fiction I have ever seen. The liberal use of personal histories and stories along with illustrations from periodicals reporting the situation make this compelling and fascinating.

What would you do if there was no food to eat, no clean clothes to wear or no shoes to wear in winter? The answers to these questions are found in Black Potatoes, which is set in Ireland in 1845 at the onset of the Potato famine. At the time of the potato famine, there were three classes of people in Ireland, the Irish farm laborers, the Irish farmers, and the English landlords. The farm laborers were the poorest, the farmers were middle class, and the landlords were the wealthy and powerful. The farm laborers and farmers rented land from the landlords and planted potatoes. When the potato famine hit, the Irish had a hard time paying their rents because of their failed crops. The Irish people had a long and enduring time during the potato famine to keep their families fed and well. The British Government came to the aid of the Irish, but many
times it was too late. The book is very Anti-British and rightfully so according to the evidence of British attitudes toward the Irish that reveal the ethnic and religious prejudices that divided the Irish and the English. The writing style of the author is very realistic and Irish everyday life is very detailed that it leaves a horrific feeling of sadness for those who lived and died during the potato famine and the years after. The pictures in the book are actual sketches obtained from various sources such as the Illustrated London News and British and Irish libraries.

Black Potatoes is a very readable and understandable review of the important elements of the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. Wishing to learn more about this essential event in my Irish-American heritage, I read the book, The Great Hunger, which is offered and reviewed separately at this site. I mistakenly thought that would be a better read than Black Potatoes which is advertised as being for a high-school audience. But all the essentials of The Great Hunger were delivered in less than 1/3 the text by Black Potatoes, which of course is a much faster and informative read. In addition, it carries many sketches which make the story that much more vivid and imaginable, while there are many fewer in The Great Hunger which seems itself written more from the British point of view than the Irish (the author of Hunger was herself British). Black Potatoes is an excellent way to get a rapid understanding of that pivotal five-year period in Irish history.

I have long been interested in the Great Famine in Ireland and so I got this book and it explained everything very well. I read it front to back I couldn't put it down...

Today's society tends to think of history as within the last few years, so this book gives a picture of an earlier time of great devastation and a story of survival. The book of Black Potatoes gives a great insight how a virus caused the destruction of a vital food crop for the Irish and how the British government treated the people of Ireland. I felt sorry for the poor, starving people, but I wondered why they did not grow other vegetables along with the potatoes so they did not have to starve. They grew grains for the landowners but the question of why other crops for themselves was never answered. For a government to allow citizens to starve because of crop failure is hard to understand. I am very happy that now we have scientists readily available to find the cause of a virus infestation before a great calamity results. Apparently, they did not have the means during the time of Black Potatoes. I purchased the book to allow my home-schooled granddaughters a look at a former time in history. History must be taught so the former mistakes of mankind will not be repeated. Unfortunately, that isn't necessarily so.

This book describes the Great Hunger in a balanced way. It discusses the repeated crop failures -- potatoes were the staple of the Irish diet, due to the tenant farming situation of the time. (Tenant farming resembles, to me, sharecropping in the American South.)

The book alternates between describing the famine and the people affected by it and by the responses of the of both the British Government and the NGOs of the time. It highlights how the governmental policies failed and how many in Britain felt that the famine was God's justice against the Catholic Irish. It's this perfect storm of a natural disaster, governmental incompetence and prejudice that makes the Great Hunger so tragic. (IT;s also easy to draw parallels between the Great Hunger and the early responses to AIDS or to Katrina.)

Black Potatoes is a great introduction to the Irish Potato Famine, but it;s aimed more at middle or high school aged children.

I found this book to be extremely interesting. I learned a great deal about the tragedy of the Irish famine in 1845-50 and the deplorable conditions of the Irish peasants. It stuns me that something more was not done to help the poor laborers. I understand now why so many Irish people immigrated to the US looking for a better way of life. It also showed me how resilient people can be and how they can survive with very little. An eye-opening book for me and I would recommend it for a great non-fiction read for middle and young adult readers (adults also).

It is about the potato blight that caused the famine in Ireland in the 1840's. I would liked to have had a more in-depth treatment of the time, but I think it was very age appropriate. A nice feature was the ink drawings that looked like they were from newspapers of the time. The numbers in the book are almost mind-boggling. The pounds of potatoes per person consumed in that country, the number of people who died of starvation or disease and the number who emigrated to other countries. Even now, Ireland has only half the population that it had before the famine.